


honourbound

by kalypsobean



Category: The Odyssey - Homer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:46:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the morning after the years before</p>
            </blockquote>





	honourbound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/gifts).



"I don't know how to stay," he says. He woke her up with his hands, rough from sailing, and with his lips, chapped from the wind. He has killed many; it breaks her heart to hear it, but she knew. His people would no longer love him, not with their families' blood on his hands and on his floor.

 

"I cannot leave," she says. She kissed him back and opened herself to his embrace; their coupling was tender, and she had bled as if a virgin. It had been their reunion, a renewing of their vows; it was appropriate, if an unwelcome portent. But what would she do, she who had lived in these halls and no longer knew the ways of nature; she knew how to win a war of words but that would not serve him as he journeyed beyond the lands she called theirs.

 

She wants to say she could go with him, that they could meet in the guise of farmers or merchants and travel as if nobody knew their names. It would be fruitless.

"I will stay, so that our son has someone to guide him," she says, when he is dressed and facing away from her, still naked in their marriage bed.

"I will wait where the river splits," he says. For her to come to him, or if the time comes to make a safe return, she does not ask.

 

When he kisses her, it does not feel like goodbye; there is a familiar emptiness, that same which she is used to filling with duty and loyalty, but it does not last, does not echo within her, and grows smaller with time.

 

She packs by moonlight and steals away; she cannot bear another goodbye, no more fuel for her grief.

His staff marks her journey's end, and he stands at the door, as if he knew.


End file.
